Activities and experiences of Adam Kwok, a full-time missionary in the Taiwan Taichung Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Thomas is learning a lot about love, patience, and being organized

In his second set of messages to the family, Thomas included a picture of him and his companion, Elder Martin.

Thomas and Elder Martin taught a lesson to 3 other missionaries a week ago and it was a great experience. He is now able to teach most of the first gospel lesson and to pray in Malay. In fact, he knows all the colors and numbers, and can carry on a basic conversation now. But then, he says, "actually, a one-sided conversation, because I am still working on understanding Malay when people talk fast... I can kind of piece it together if they talk way slow."In his studies, Thomas was touched by 1 Corinthians 13 in the New Testament of the Bible. He likes it so much that he wants to put that as his Facebook status. He says, "I never really understood about loving the people that you don't even know, but we have been trying to learn about love and it has been really good for me. Something I liked was that the only true love is unconditional love. And that is way hard. Like loving people even if they hate you and beat you and stuff." He concludes that even if one is not able to have unconditional love perfectly in this life, one can still work on it.

The other things Thomas is working on include

patience and being more organized. He says, "I'm doing pretty good with both. It is good for me to keep them as goals, because I can then feel the emotion of impatience, or see disorganization and then remember that I am working on it. It is still hard to recognize the disorganized part, but I clean my room every night so it is all good. I just misplace things for like a day and then find them."

In his message, Thomas bore his testimony (a statement of his beliefs) in Malay, without notes: